Hi! It depends a lot on your experience and two paths:
One option is the career accelerator bucket of programs. Like Formation, Outco, Interview Kickstart, Pathrise. Disclosure: I'm the co-founder of Formation. At Formation, most people we work with have work experience but have some people with CS degrees (or are graduating soon) who are DS&A heavy and aiming for new grad FAANG roles, and I think it's a good fit for that. Although you should be starting to apply and interview very soon because it's the new grad hiring cycle right now! Formation doesn't have any veteran benefits so it might not be a good fit, but check out these programs.
If you don't have any internships and are not aiming for a FAANG/top-tier company that is CS-fundamentals heavy then I would recommend looking at a bootcamp. A lot of bootcamps start from scratch, so veteran benefits or not, I would consider a program like Codesmith, Rithm, or possibly Hack Reactor, that expect you do know basic coding already so you can focus on the project work that you feel is missing.
u/redditseason wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
I have over a decade of experience in tech but none of it is in a coding role. If I've just started taking programming classes to make a career switch into software engineering, would a career accelerator like Formation be appropriate? Or would you recommend going a different rou
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I think it depends on your goals, timeframe first. Most of these programs are good for people aiming to get a job in 1 to 6 months. Then it depends on how much programming you did in your role, if any, even if it was like "no-code" experience. And finally, it depends on your affinity to understanding the fundamentals, e.g. DS&A.
For most people with no professional experience or no CS degree / past bootcamp, doing a bootcamp is probably a better way to go. But if you are exploring options it can't hurt to explore both and see which one seems right for you.